King Lear - Week 4 - Showtime?

You shall get it by running:

‘Truth’s a dog that must to kennel. He must be whipped out, when Lady Brach may stand by th' fire and stink.’

Writing a blog about rehearsals isn’t hard but it isn’t easy either.   

How much can I say without revealing too much?   

Idea and process give birth to a potential rift … theatre gossip even.   I’m sure you’d love that, ‘Truth’s a dog’ (as the fool would say) rifts are as important as bonds - you get an understanding of perspective?  

It’s difficult to talk about things going well all the time.   I now understand why controversy makes the front pages while good news rarely does.  So this week’s blog is about controversy, and good news.

Shakespeare = Drama.   Drama makes a good story great.

Week 4... in the thick of things ...

Act 3 is our first target.    It needed fine tuning, we all thought.   Last week we spoke about scenes informing scenes, acts do the same thing.   A chain - links - connections - life.

We reworked the whole of Act 3 to good effect.   

Make a move

A session with Kevin McCurdy tightening up those combat sequences ... in fact he worked in a few new moves.

Meanwhile Coral Messam refined the foul fiend’s possession movement and Jo our lighting designer began to influence on our blocking (actors/action need to be lit especially if you’ve a cast with people of colour, new designers take note).   

Tayo Akinbode, our sound designer, is also a musician, and he created an atmosphere to support the text and action.   Everything is coming along well.   

Then ...you’re running on Saturday!

'When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools'

Weekend rehearsals.   Hmmm ... It goes like this - tell the company that you’ll be working on weekends during the casting and recruitment process and usually it’s “Sure that’s fine”.  Remind them the week before we scheduled it and it’s “what time do we finish (aside) I had plans.” ... yup, me included.   But eventually our Saturday rehearsal is dedicated to running our first half.

Now here’s the controversy.   If half the company want to continue working through scenes and the other half want to run  - what do you do?

'Men must endure their going hence even as their coming hither' ...... 

A technical requirement: Jo our lighting designer and Tayo our sound designer needed to see the acts in their entirety ... it was the only way they could collaborate to create the right atmosphere to support the production.   Phew!

That was pretty much our storm.   A lot less sound and fury than we thought.   Really.

And so, into 'the module' - an amazing space for great theatre.